Has anyone heard the SAT XD1

 @antinn  Thanks for that. I think the Basis Transcendence is awfully hard to beat, and it is a fraction of the price of the new SAT...even with the Superarm 9 or 12 mounted! 

It is also awful ugly (the Basis). The SAT is plain Jane. Now the Air Force Zero, that is a piece of work. $450K

You can do anything if you throw enough money at it. The trick and the point of this hobby is to get as close as you can without spending a fortune. 

Music Rules

Davey, I can't agree with you that stratospheric product pricing such as we see with regard to SAT is going to ruin the hobby.  On the contrary, I see it as one more sign of life.  For youngsters or first-timers who want to play vinyl, SAT is a total nonentity.  Most of them will never have heard of SAT, except perhaps as some sort of weird joke.  In the last few months, I have been contacted by two separate friends for vinyl system recommendations. One is my 30-something nephew in Michigan. The other is the son of my best friend who wanted to buy a vinyl system for his teenage daughter, to fulfill her birthday wish.  They ended up with turntables in the low end of the spectrum, cost-wise, that can be ordered any day of the week from any of several vendors on-line.  The fact that a 15 year old girl wants to get into vinyl is another sign of vigor, even though she may never want much more than what she is starting out with.  (I sent her a few jazz LPs to get her going further.) That end of the market is very healthy, so far as I can tell.  In each case, appropriate electronics were chosen to go with the turntable.  For others with bigger bucks, as you note too, there is a plethora of new and used turntables that perform at a very high level for reasonable cost, relative to the SAT. (You can use the SAT as a reason why spending $10,000 or more on a turntable is "reasonable".)  That was basically my message to you in my last post.  By the way, based on antinn's description of the SAT, it seems the Dohmann Helix, with its built-in Minus K platform, would also come into play as a great buy at a reasonable cost, especially used. I've heard that one, and it is one of a few belt-drives that have impressed me in the past few years.

The 250GTO was sitting in the rear service area at Luigi Chinetti's Ferrari dealership in Greenwich, CT, in 1971.  Next to it was a 250LM, the first mid-engine Ferrari race car.  Next to that was a Daytona Spider, a real one.  The asking price for the 250LM was also $12,500.  The Daytona was essentially a nearly new used car at that time and was priced at $23,000.  In the late 60s, the going price for a low mileage 275GTB was $6-7000. You could buy one every week at that price.  I actually thought about financing either the GTO or the LM, but I decided I would also need a garage, which was a no-go for me at that time. Of course, I would do differently if I had a second chance.

lewm

Davey, I can’t agree with you that stratospheric product pricing such as we see with regard to SAT is going to ruin the hobby.

I can’t possibly imagine how the presence of one high-priced product - or even 5, or 10, or 2,500 - could possibly destroy an entire industry. It really takes a leap of logic to believe otherwise.

High-priced products have long been part of audio’s high end. That’s nothing new.

I forgot to mention that Davey was right to point out there is no analogy between the value or cost of vintage Ferrari race cars and the SAT turntable or tonearms.  I think the masochist in me just loves to tell that story.